


this word used to mean something else

by flailingensues



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, College AU, Dorm-typical banter, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, M/M, TA!Yuuri, Vague Linguistic mentions, YOI Career Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-02-07 15:25:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12844050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flailingensues/pseuds/flailingensues
Summary: Yuuri has three objectives for this semester:1, figure out where Phichit gets his hamsters from, 2, survive his TA job, hopefully without having to fail anyone for plagiarism, and 3, not fall for the mysterious student who writes perfect essays and sticks encouragement notes in his folder.And if he fails all three, well, at least he didn’t go down without a fight.





	1. I want you to form a contract with me and become my TA

**Author's Note:**

> For YOI career week! (Posting on the last day, smh)  
> A TA, a.k.a Teaching Assistant, a.k.a ~~Teacher's Slave~~ , is usually a student who is employed by a professor to help out with a specific class, which could include marking homework, handling midterms, ~~buying coffee~~ , and actually appearing in class to help out.

“So, while English is what we call a head-initial language, a lot of other languages put the head at the end of sentence—like Japanese, yes, Yuuri?”

Yuuri jolts and looks up from where he had been staring at his notes absently.

“Uh, yes?” he manages to get out. _Smile and nod_ , Phichit’s voice reminds in his head. Phichit would probably be great at filming wildlife documentaries, Yuuri thinks, the way he knows exactly what to do with predators.

Well. Professor Chan, with her candy floss hair and wiry glasses, isn’t exactly a predator, but you can never tell with professors. 

And as if to prove his point, Professor Chan smiles and says, “We’ll ask you for a few examples later.” 

Yuuri looks at the clock imploringly. 

* * *

He must have explained Japanese syntax a bit _too_ well, because at the end of the year, Professor Chan asks if Yuuri would be willing to be her Teaching Assistant.

He says, “I’ll think about it”, which would have meant “no” if it weren’t for Phichit.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Yuuri’s roommate says as he fiddles with Photoshop for his media assignment. Yuuri thinks that Phichit and Photoshop make for a terrifying and fascinating combo, even if Phichit swears by the apps on his phone and his “pure natural talent for selfie angles”.

“You know, you can earn a bit of pocket money, you don’t have to sell your soul to a fast food chain store, and,” Phichit spins round on his chair, “I’ll be here if you need to complain about anything.”

“You always are,” Yuuri says gratefully, “but what would I need to complain about?”

“Oh, the usual TA stuff. Professors being late for meetings, kids not handing in homework, all that jazz.”

“Oh.” Yuuri stares at the application form, waiting for it to grow horns and a tail and bite him.

“And plagiarism,” Phichit supplies. “Lots and lots of plagiarism.”

* * *

Second week of his Sophomore year, Yuuri stumbles into his room, weighed down with about 30 plastic files filled with reports.

“First assignments!” Phichit’s glee is unreasonable, considering Yuuri actually has to mark every single one of them. Yuuri starts to say so, but is interrupted by everything clattering to the floor spectacularly.

Phichit rushes to help, but Yuuri shrugs and sits down on the floor. Might as well mark them in a comforting position, he thinks, as he fishes his red pen out of his bag and uncaps it with resolution.

For the first couple of folders, Yuuri has trouble deciphering students' handwriting, let alone actually grade anything with the rubric Professor Chan had given him. After that, he has to search everywhere for the students’ names, as some apparently thought it was a good idea to write their name hidden under a paper clip like a squashed caterpillar.

Then, of course, was the actual content of the essays.

The first few weren’t that bad, actually. The fifth folder was very good. But Yuuri is pretty sure no one he knows can write like a New York Times journalist, and after reverse-checking a couple of sentences in Google, realises he has had his first taste of plagiarism.

“Honestly, you think I wouldn’t notice…”

By the twenty-fifth folder, Yuuri feels like lying flat on the floor and wailing.

“Inflections in Russian show that…” he mumbles, not able to trust his brain to read silently any more.

Yuuri pauses.

He reads the essay. He rereads it. He checks a couple sentences in the search bar, just to be sure.

He isn’t mistaken.

“Phichit, whoever wrote this, I’m in love with them,”

“Wow, is it that bad?”

“The handwriting is perfect! There’s proper spacing! Actually focusing on the subject! and,” Yuuri looks skywards, “They wrote it _all by themselves_.”

“Wow, your standards really have dropped, huh?”

“You try checking twenty five essays for plagiarism and tell me you wouldn’t love this bright pink folder,” Yuuri says, gripping it like a lifeline, but that isn’t enough to stop Phichit wrenching it from his grasp.

“Let’s have a look at who Yuuri’s in love with…Viktor…Nikiforov?”

“That…that does sound Russian,” Yuuri gets up to look with Phichit, despite his embarrassment.

“You’re right, he does have nice handwriting. Well, at least we know who should write the wedding invites.”

“Phichit!”

“What? You’re the one who said you were in love?” Phichit’s grin is sunny with a side of evil.

Phichit will never let him live it down. Yuuri's foreseeable future is filled with gentle teasing about marrying a Russian he’s never even met.

“I wasn’t—I didn’t—you’re doing that on purpose,” Yuuri splutters at Phichit’s ridiculous waggling eyebrows. “Anyway, Viktor is getting an A and we are going to drop this and never, ever talk about it again.”

“Shame.” Phichit pouts.

Yuuri gets back to marking, feeling a bit giddy.

“Oh, Yuuri, when you get married, can I be best man _and_ take the wedding photos?”

Yuuri chucks a particularly flexible folder at him.

* * *

Yuuri thought he could forever remain the anonymous TA of linguistics class, but it turns out that wasn’t to be.

“I was thinking we could make a Facebook group!” Professor Chan beams at him.

“A Facebook...group.” Yuuri echoes dully. He does a mental run-down of his Facebook wall. Weeds, mostly. A couple of game posts. And birthday messages he had been procrastinating on replying for nearly a year.

“Exactly! It will be great for you to have a place where you can make class announcements, since some of the students aren’t from our department...Also, I know you like your privacy, so it would be a better way for them to get in touch with you if they have any questions!”

What about my questions, Yuuri thinks, such as _can you please stop plagiarizing?_

He steels himself and nods, resigning himself to battle.

* * *

Phichit does a violent double take when he gets back to their room.

“Facebook? Yuuri, you’re finally using social media and you betray me with _Facebook_?”

Yuuri wordlessly turns his laptop so Phichit can see.

“'Linguistics yay’...oh, you have to do one of _those_...” Yuuri honestly can’t tell if Phichit is being sympathetic or laughing at him. “Well, nothing’s perfect. I can make a header for you if you want?”

Yuuri should know better. “ _Phichit_ ,” he says gratefully.

“Yes, I am the best friend. Now how about you change that title?”

“What? I spent ages coming up with that!”

“’Linguistics yay’, all in lowercase? That’s the best you can do, Yuuri, really?” Phichit teases.

“...It’s been done.” Yuuri can’t help grinning at the look on Phichit’s face. “Too late now.”

“You’re evil.”

“And you’re calling the kettle black.”

Phichit laughs at that, and Yuuri feels infinitely better about creating a cyber-space full of strangers who probably hate him for giving them an F, until Phichit decides to break the peace.

“Now, Yuuri, think of the silver lining. You’ll be able to get Viktor’s contact!”

Yuuri nearly breaks his keyboard.“Are..are you ever going to let me live that down?”

“Nope!” Phichit chirps, and promptly sails out of the room.

* * *

Yuuri tries hard not to think about Phichit’s words when he checks the invites for the group, but inevitably, there is an icon named Viktor Nikiforov.

Yuuri tries to stop himself, but the cursor moves on its own, hovering above “Add friend”and revealing a picture of an adorable brown poodle.

He stares at his screen.

The poodle seems to look back at him beseechingly.

Yuuri’s brain feebly runs through a list of pros and cons. Pros: handwriting. Poodles. Making a friend, despite what Phichit says. Cons: Probably, definitely, a really weird thing to do.

He almost clicks.

He doesn't, in the end, and tries to put it out of his mind even when he is haunted by chocolate poodles in his dreams.

* * *

Midterms roll around, and Yuuri feels like curling up into a ball and never waking up again.

Unfortunately, doing so wouldn't make his mental to-do list any shorter. Nor would it eliminate the pile of linguistic essays he inevitably had to mark.

With one last lingering glance at his bed, he gets to work on the second pile of essays of the semester, which was considerably less full of plagiarism after the culprits were graced with Fs galore.

Despite the overall improvement of all the students, Yuuri can’t help but smile when he gets to the familiar pink folder.

Viktor’s essay is perfect, as expected, and almost without thinking, Yuuri draws a tiny poodle in red ink after he's ticked the end.

(Just because it’s midterms week and it was a job well done, he tells himself.)

( _Sure_ , he can almost hear Phichit reply.)


	2. when he says i'm not taking linguistics next semester but he means something else entirely

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: well, technically I am on holiday, so I can post fic, right?  
> brain: but... homework...  
> me: i am oN HOLIDAY SO I CAN POST FIC RIGHT

After midterms, students barely have time to recover from exams, dragging their zombified brains to wrestle with yet more assignments.The slings and arrows of student life, Yuuri thinks.

And the coping mechanisms of student life, of course. Phichit somehow manages to smuggle a hamster cage into the dorm but fails to smuggle an actual hamster.

“I got caught on CCTV,” Phichit tells Yuuri forlornly.

“Couldn’t you hide him somewhere?” Yuuri tries to imagine being a hamster hiding in Phichit’s bomber jacket. It probably wouldn’t be too bad; Yuuri was sure Phichit had an unlimited supply of sunflower seeds on him somehow.

“He wanted to nest in my hair, Yuuri! I couldn’t say no to that!” Phichit wails.

Yuuri just shoves the hamster cage under his bed, in case someone comes home drunk late at night and trips over it.

(Phichit, of course. Not Yuuri. Obviously.)

Three weeks pass relatively uneventfully, until Yuuri gets the next batch of essays.

Either Professor Chan was teaching way too fast or nobody wanted to listen, because no one seems remotely ready to comment on The Great Vowel Shift. (Which begs the question: "great" for _whom_ , exactly. Again, the answer is not Yuuri.)

This is, of course, excluding Victor. Yuuri marks his flawless essay, noting with slight disappointment the unchanged poodle on the previous paper. When he turns the page, however, he is in for a surprise.

Inside the cover of the folder, there is a bright yellow post-it note, with Victor’s sweeping cursive.

“Thank you so much, TA!!!!” the note read, next to what looked like encouraging Russian. Off to the side, Victor had drawn another lopsided poodle and a smiley face with two dots for eyes and a heart for a mouth.

Yuuri smiles despite himself.

 _I hope this doesn’t count as favoritism_ , he thinks, as he writes “no problem, thank you” on the note in the smallest writing possible.

Then, after some thought, he draws a pair of glasses and a tiny smile next to the other drawings.

* * *

Yuuri’s good mood lasts for a total of three whole days, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Phichit. Yuuri manages to get out of a painfully embarrassing questioning by asking about the Korean exchange student, which successfully sets Phichit off on a tangent.

It ends, however, with Professor Chan starting to plan for finals. “Her other TA went to Canada,” he tells Phichit, “and now she wants me to help write the exam _and_ monitor it.”

It wasn’t exactly the exam that bothered Yuuri. It was the fact that he actually had to appear on front of all these people. Marking essays and posting on Facebook was one thing; having to look sleep-deprived college students in the face while they regurgitated information they would probably never use again was another.

He accepts Phichit’s condolences, but he doesn’t miss the look in Phichit’s eyes.

“What,” he says flatly.

“Is this about finals, then? Or is it about finally being able to see a certain Russian in person?”

Yuuri gives up. “Where is that hamster cage, Phichit, I think I need to hibernate for the next five months.”

* * *

There is only one essay left for this semester, and Yuuri finds himself anxious for a reply as he picks out the pink folder.

Luckily, there is a new post-it note.

“Teacher told us about the finals! Good luck, TA!”

Yuuri could almost cry.

Underneath, Victor had drawn a character, more detailed than the last, that was presumably himself. There was the same heart-shaped smile, and a couple of sweeping lines covering half of his face, representing what Yuuri could only guess were bangs.

Yuuri most certainly does not commit the picture to memory.

* * *

Yuuri tries very hard not to stare at people as they enter the lecture hall and dump their bags next to the podium.

Not that anyone notices him. He’s tucked away in a corner, clutching an unassuming paper bag filled with the Final Papers of Doom.

Professor Chan arrives, heels clicking away, and gives Yuuri a bright smile. He feels slightly more at ease as she beckons him to discuss some details, until suddenly the bell rings, causing Yuuri to jump and scramble to hand out the exam papers.

He focuses on counting the heads in each aisle, fumbling with the rough edges of the answer sheets,and only after he has retreated near to the relative safety of Professor Chan does he allow himself to look.

There is a brunette with freckles across her face that he recognises from Facebook. A boy he is sure he has seen in his dorm halls somewhere, nose impossibly close to his test paper. A girl with earrings that are nearly as big as her face, and a guy with silver hair.

The guy’s fringe hangs down, shading his eyes from view as he writes steadily.

Yuuri tears his eyes away, heartbeat speeding up.

He busies himself with Professor Chan’s occasional questions, nodding and smiling when required. The silver-haired boy puts his hand up for more paper, and Yuuri, by some miracle, manages not to drop it as he passes it over.

One by one, the seats empty as students turn in their papers: the ones who give up after an hour leave first, stretching and yawning, while others continue to struggle.

The bell finally goes off at twelve and Professor Chan calls everyone to put their pens down.

Everyone, meaning a single, silver-haired someone.

“Viktor!” Professor Chan exclaims. “You’ve done great this semester! Yuuri has nothing but praise for you.” “Wait--“ Yuuri turns to protest to Professor Chan, but the boy—Viktor, he reminds himself—has already turned his impossibly blue eyes on him.

Yuuri has to remind himself to breathe.

“Is that so? Hopefully I’ll pass this time, then, Professor,” he says somewhat cheekily.

“Wait—this time?” Yuuri can’t help but blurt out, regretting it almost immediately.

Viktor looks amused. “It was a busy semester.”

“Busy?” Professor Chan scoffs. “You had so many credits, all the staff thought you were crazy! Double majoring in your third year, it’s your own fault, Viktor.”

Yuuri tries to take in Viktor, who is older than him, smarter than him, and—yes, he’ll say it—incredibly handsome, and tries not to feel overwhelmed.

But then he remembers doodles of fluffy dogs and heart-shaped mouths.

Yuuri realises he’s staring when he notices Viktor’s bemused expression. By his side, for some reason, Professor Chan is looking at Yuuri with the same expression that Phichit gets when he’s looking at hamsters in the pet shop.

Yuuri pushes the stack of papers towards Professor Chan, suddenly unable to look any longer. “Well, uh, I’ll be going if you don’t need me, professor, sorry, and thank you—"

“Wait,” Viktor’s slim fingers grasp his wrist. “I thought I should tell you that I won’t be taking Linguistics next semester.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says, staring at Viktor's pale hand. He probably plays _piano_ , for goodness’ sake. Yuuri resists the strange urge to flip their hands and link them.

He glances at Professor Chan warily, but she has politely turned away, flipping through her handbag.

He’s on his own.

In one way, he’s truly grateful for Viktor, for making an effort when no one else was bothered, for the tiny messages that may seem like nothing to anyone either than Yuuri.

But Viktor is obviously amazing, and Yuuri doesn’t think he can compete with that.

But Viktor’s eyes are bright blue and imploring and _definitely_ not helping Yuuri's decision-making skills.

“That would be a shame,” Yuuri says slowly, phantom courage taking hold, “I could do with some help surviving Linguistics.”

Viktor’s eyes light up, and his smile turns into a full-blown grin.

_It does look quite like a heart._

“I heard that, Yuuri Katsuki!” Professor Chan looks up from her bag-rummaging. Yuuri flinches and drops Viktor’s hand, but she doesn’t look angry in the slightest.

She smiles as she takes in the two of them. “Anyway, Yuuri, thank you so much for all your work this semester...I literally could not have done it without you.” She sighs a sigh that sounds suspiciously like “J”. “Come to my office tomorrow, I have something for you. And Viktor,” she turns from a blushing Yuuri to a beaming Viktor, “Since my other TA left, the space is free. If you’re not too busy, you’re welcome to consider it. I won’t let Professor Bailey snag you this time!”

“That is an _excellent_ idea, professor.” Viktor beams and Professor Chan shakes her head fondly. “Now, you’ll have to excuse us, Professor. We have some catching up to do."

Viktor takes Yuuri’s hand again.

 _This time_ , Yuuri thinks, _I won’t let go_.

* * *

Phichit doesn’t notice when Yuuri gets back to the dorm five hours later. He seems to have succeeded in his hamster mission: two ginger and white hamsters are frolicking in the infamous cage like there’s no tomorrow.

“They look like Hamtaro,” Yuuri comments absently.

Phichit whips around. “Yuu—you are a genius, Yuuri! I was just thinking what to name them...wait," he stops, looking at Yuuri suspiciously. “You’re doing that glowy thing you do when you eat Katsudon... Did Professor Chan fire you?”

 Yuuri grins. “You have no idea.” 


	3. Epilogue: talk etymology to me

“I swear to god,’ Yuuri moans as he flips another test paper. “If I read ‘gay used to be happy not homosexual’ one more time I will—I will do something I regret. I haven’t decided what yet.”

Viktor smirks. “I would be happy to brainstorm for you.”

Yuuri tries not to blush, and settles for a half-hearted glare at Viktor, who is three-quarters through his pile and still immaculately composed. Even his pen seems to love him. Yuuri has had to change his three times.

“Ah, this one’s quite good,” Viktor pushes a paper towards him.

“ _Poodle_ came from German, _splash in water_...really? I didn’t know that.”

Viktor smile turns from teasing to genuine. “Back then, I really liked your Makkachin drawing, you know.”

“Oh, uh...thanks? I liked yours too,” Yuuri says, bewildered. Viktor’s smile grows cryptic.

“Ah, back when Yuuri sent me cute doodles.”

“Wait—it was you that sent me them, I never—”

“You started it, Yuuri,” Viktor grins. “I was beginning to think I would have to go without ever talking to you.”

And, well. Viktor is right, now Yuuri thinks of it. Maybe he’s braver than he thought.

Still.

“First poodle does not give me extra credit, Viktor,” he pushes the paper back.

“Ah, but it does in _my_ class.”

“Professor Nikiforov,” Yuuri laughs.

“And my star pupil Yuuri Katsuki. Who excels at kissing, I may add.”

“ _Viktor_ ,” Yuuri rolls his eyes. “Help me with marking if you’re done.”

“And then you’ll agree to a make-up exam?”

Yuuri doesn’t even bother to ask, but leans over and kisses him, just to shut him up.

“ _Yuuri_ ,” Viktor gushes. Yuuri can never understand why Viktor shows him the sappy face he’s making now, much less the fact that Yuuri is the one to cause it, but he cherishes it all the same.

“Marking, Viktor.”

“Spoilsport, Yuuri.” Yuuri smiles and looks back to his pile of essays. He only gets five minutes of peace.

“Honestly, can they only write ‘gay used to mean happy’?”

Viktor’s laugh is contagious. “Something you’ll regret, Yuuri. I have the perfect thing in mind.”


End file.
